Mumbai-based restaurateur Gauri Devidayal on the lessons she has learnt from failure

In the hospitality industry for over a decade, Gauri Devidayal shares her experience of dealing with the many crises that entail entrepreneurship

As entrepreneurs, we are often called upon to share our success stories and the lessons from our triumphs, whereas, in fact, the greatest lessons are learnt from the challenges faced and unsuccessful outcomes. Over the last two years, any time a fellow restaurateur announced the shuttering of their restaurant–like one more victim that had succumbed to the deadly Coronavirus–it reminded me of the time we had to make a similar heart-wrenching decision.

It was 2018, and in an unprecedented move, two of Mumbai’s successful restaurant groups, with 21 years of experience between them, were coming together to open a chic resto-bar in the tony district of Colaba, just behind the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. With a bartender from New York, featuring the cuisine of the Asian Golden Triangle (Thailand, Myanmar and Laos) for the first time in the city, in a space designed by one of the city’s top architecture firms, Miss T was a dream recipe.

Except that it wasn’t. Six months after the initial euphoria and buzz it generated in the city, and after most people had visited to dine at least once, the footfalls started flailing. No amount of PR could revive the restaurant. What had gone wrong?

Looking back

It was the first time we had brought investors on board, and with that came a self-imposed pressure to open the restaurant as soon as possible to start generating revenue. Many of our decisions began to be driven by financial considerations. When it comes to a food and beverage experience, costs are an important factor, of course, but should never come in the way of quality. We knew the menu was almost ready, so in a rush to open the doors, we figured we would fix any blips once the restaurant was open. In the hospitality business, you only get one chance to win your customer over, and if you aren’t 100 per cent there, you may never get that second chance, even after you’ve “fixed the blips”. Never launch until you are completely ready.

We had wanted to create a chic, sexy, adult cocktail-bar experience, so we restricted the age limit to above 21 years after 7 pm. But Mumbai isn’t New York. It’s a family-centric culture and in failing to recognise that, we ended up upsetting more than attracting guests. We misjudged our audience yet again, when we didn’t accommodate the large vegetarian population just because the South-East Asian countries we were attempting to emulate tended to have a meat- and seafood-centric diet. It is then important to know your customer.

Thus far, all the brands we launched had been relatively successful. This was the first time we had needed to close down a venture. The restaurant business is a very public one–it depends entirely on word-of-mouth publicity and the news of failure spreads twice as fast as that of success. Being at the helm of the business, one tends to take this very personally and assumes that everyone around us is recalibrating their opinion of our ability. This was one of the most significant lessons I learnt. A single disappointment in business is not a reflection of one’s overall capability. Literally every successful entrepreneur has been through multiple let-downs but since we talk about them so little, we forget they exist. Our opinion of what people are thinking about us, is most often just that–our opinion. No one really has the time to revel in other people’s miseries.

Restaurants require significant capital investment. Hence, when you have to shut down the establishment even before you’ve recovered your investment, it can be a big financial blow. As long as you haven’t put all your eggs in the proverbial single basket, and have savings for exactly these uncertain times in our lives, remember that money comes and goes. If you’ve done it once, you can do it again, and you can’t cry too much over what’s spent already. It’s the implicit risk of entrepreneurship. While we all take our businesses personally, don’t ever let it define you and take over your life to a point where you can’t step away from it. There’s more to life than money and business.

Change is constant

You can, however, be smart about what you do after recognising that what’s gone is gone. Fifteen months after living on a prayer and stretching our hopes as much as we could, we decided to close down Miss T and rebrand it as a new concept. Mei 13, a Cantonese restaurant, helmed by chefs from Malaysia and Singapore, opened its doors to renewed excitement on 7 March 2020. Ten days and a fair chunk of change later, a global crisis brought this new avatar to a grinding halt.

The dire circumstances that the restaurant industry found itself in during the Covid-19 pandemic are well known. The biggest challenge for me, as a leader, was being able to reassure my team of a future when I myself had no idea. The natural response in this situation is to not say anything at all, because we tend to assume the worst reaction to bad news. But I learnt soon enough that adopting an open, honest and regular line of communication was the best we could do. It doesn’t leave any room for assumptions, second-guessing and rumour-mongering, and, in fact, keeps a team more intact. In any service industry, the team is everything–the team, not any single person.

Roller coaster ride

When our first executive chef moved on from The Table–the very first restaurant we set up–many years ago, between guests and the media questioning our ability to carry on, one had a tough time dealing with self-doubt. But we soon realised that no one is indispensable and it truly takes a village to run an enterprise. We just had to be patient and let time tell that nothing would change and we would be just fine.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my years of being a restaurateur, it’s that one should never ever give up, never lose hope. As long as you deliver a great product and sincere hospitality, there will always be a need for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Success is all the more sweeter when it hasn’t been quick and easy, and when you can look back, recalibrate, reinvent and resume. In October 2021, a year and half after closing Mei 13, we opened Mag Street Café in its place. Whether we’ll finally see success, only time will tell, but until then, we’re enjoying the roller-coaster ride that is entrepreneurship.

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